Frequently Asked Questions by Creators

1. The Basics

YourTour is a huge step forward in guided tours – it brings the world around you to life by turning your mobile into a personal interactive tour guide via immersive, insightful and unique walks through fascinating places.

Explorers can enjoy tours at their own pace, either individually or synced with their friends or family for a shared experience. Authors (yes, that’s you) can create their own unique tours and share them with the world.

YourTour is a community for the curious and passionate to experience new places, rediscover their own region or share their own passion for a particular place or subject.

YourTour – explore like never before!

OK, here’s the science bit: Each tour takes place in a specific location and guides you along a route. The app uses the phone’s in-built GPS technology to ensure Explorers always know where they are and are listening to the right audio and viewing the right images at the right time.

Tours are typically 20 minutes to an hour, but can take longer if you stop and explore along the way.

Passionate about a place? Now you can monetise your knowledge like never before…

The ground-breaking, standalone YourTour Creator app lets you create immersive, personal audio tours for the world to enjoy! It’s free, quick and simple to create a tour on your iPhone – all you need is your knowledge. You can add photos and music; narrate your tour or choose a voiceover pro.

Once the tour is live, you can sit back while it generates income for you – any time, any day, any weather!

To maximise the frequency (and amount) of tips from Explorers, you need to wow them with a level of knowledge and insight about that particular location. Living there certainly helps, as you can use the ubercool Walk&Talk feature to really get under the skin of your area! You can read more about Walk&Talk here.

If your tour has a particular theme (e.g. fashion, architecture, music, history etc.) it’s advisable to be an expert on the subject matter. And don’t hesitate to let the community know your expertise (e.g. Fashion Stylist for 15 years; Degree in Architecture etc.) when describing yourself!

Nope – our amazing YourTour Creator app is 100% free to use and you can publish as many tours as you want for no cost. However, you may incur optional costs of your own developing it (e.g. voiceover, background music sound effects etc.) that you might buy elsewhere in order to enhance your various tours.

We want as many Explorers to be amazed, astounded and enriched by YourTour as possible, so all tours are free to download and listen to. At the end of the tour the listener(s) will hear a short request from the Author (aka you) to leave a tip (ranging from 99p to £6.99) if they enjoyed the tour.

The more tours you make, the more money you’ll earn. So, create your ultimate, most engaging YourTour tour portfolio then sit back while you earn tips and plaudits!

“What’s in it for you”, you say? Ah, you remind us of us. Instead of charging a hefty monthly fee to use the Tour Creator, we just take a fair and transparent share of the tips you make (normally 50/50 with Authors), net of app store fees, Sales tax and any other credit/debit card fees.

We see this as a much fairer way to operate, and incentivises us all to make the very best, tip-worthy tours possible!

Note that in-app purchases are subject to fees levied by the app stores, which are currently 30% of the amount paid.

2. Building Tours

The images for your Tour, Stops and Guide points will be used in a variety of ways in the YourTour Explorer App, so we’ve given you complete control over how they look in each section:

Tour HeroLetterbox: The Letterbox will become your header photo and full-width thumbnail in the Discover section.Half-Width: The Half-Width crop will be used for smaller sized thumbnails, also visible in the Discover section.

Stop / Guide Point ImagesLetterbox: The Letterbox for Stops and Guide Points is used in the long, thin tabs on the tour description screens.Full-Screen: Full-Screen images are used when they user is actually on a tour. They’ll appear on screen when the user it at a point of interest, just as a visual cue to make sure they’re looking at the right thing!

Tags are relevant words or phrases which describe the content of your tour. This will enable your tours to come up in Explorers’ searches. We recommend always using more than one tag for each item. For example, a Tour of Central London may include tags like ‘London’, ‘Big Ben’, ‘Thames’, ‘House of Parliament’ etc.

Because it’s so hard to pigeonhole some tours to one genre, you can choose up to three of the following for each tour: Architecture, Art & Museums, Entertainment, Family-friendly, Food & drink, History, Horror, Major sights, Nature, Scenic, Sports and Other.

Walk&Talk is a fun and enjoyable way to collect background research and usable content for your tour.

Simply walk around and record photos, notes and voice clips (which can be converted into text at the tap of a button), and then import them into your Asset Library, ready for you to use for the Tour Summary, Stops, Guide Points etc.

This is a repository inside the YourTour Creator app where you can save all your photos, notes and voice clips when collecting background research and usable content for your tour. It’s very useful as it prevents you from having to sift through your phone’s main photo library or documents folder to find relevant YourTour images/copy.

Simply import/export them to/from the Tour Creator! If you take a photo, record an audio clip or make a note in the same area, it will be represented as a ‘Cluster’, which can be imported into your tour all at once.

Yes. Whilst the YourTour Creator makes it quick and easy to create and collate content to use in your tour, we understand that you may have other tools of choice when creating imagery, audio or text. Simply tap one the green ‘Import’ buttons sprinkled throughout the app, and choose the file you’d like to import. Simple!

We currently only support the ability to import from iCloud, but we are working on integrating other cloud-based services in the near future.

Yes. We appreciate that some Authors may prefer to write the entire tour in one text or Word document on their laptop / PC / tablet and import it into YourTour. To import part of or all of a Word document, simply press the import button in the Summary / Script section of the app, select your document, choose which paragraph(s) you want to import and voila – all done!

Supported file types: .doc .txt .pdf

Stops are the key focal points of your tour where you want the listener to stop, listen and observe while you narrate. You can have as many Stops as you want in your tour.

Yes, you can change the order of the stops easily, via the ‘Change Stop Order’ tool, but be careful as it will erase any path you have previously made!

YourTour automatically creates a path between two Stops. However, the perfectionist that you are, you will likely want to alter the route! Path Segments consist of multiple, moveable waypoints to help you to perfect your path.

The number of waypoints required depends on the complexity of the route (i.e. the more complex a route, the more waypoints you’ll need). You can move or delete a waypoint by tapping on it, or add another waypoint by tapping on the path.

Placed on the path between Stops, a Guide Point helps Explorers navigate your route or highlights little observations along the way. The perfect number of Guide Points depends on the complexity of your path – your main objective being to get the listener from one stop to the next, so don’t hold back!

Yes, you can use music, photographs, video, archival audio and other assets in the production of your tour(s). As the publisher, it is your responsibility to get clearances for the use of any rights protected asset you use.

Make sure you only use content including images for which you have the necessary rights to publish, either because you created the content or because you have received authorisation from the author or rights holder. If there are identifiable people in your photos, you must obtain their authorisation before publishing.

If required, don’t forget to give credits for images used in the space provided. You may use reproductions of works of art which are in the public domain provided that the photos of those works are not themselves copyright protected.

So you want to record some high quality narrations but don’t have any of the expensive audio recording gear professionals use?

No problem! All you need is your iPhone and… a blanket! Simply take a deep breath, cover yourself with the blanket and press record. Here are some more tips:

The thicker and fluffier the blanket the better.

The smaller the room the better. Got a closet? Try it out!

Don’t speak too close to the phone and always speak into the phone from the same distance.

Try to be relaxed and casual as if you were telling a story to your best friend.

Start reading your script loud and clear. When you make a mistake, take a breath and repeat the sentence until you are happy with it.

If you keep making mistakes and get frustrated, just take a break.

Important: It sounds obvious, but ensure that you keep letting fresh air in at regular intervals.

Whilst It’s not essential to have background audio, we would definitely recommend using it as well-chosen background music and/or sound effects can make a huge difference to the Explorer experience via greater immersion.

Still not convinced? Try this exercise: pick your favourite scary movie and watch it on mute. Meanwhile, play a nice, relaxing song in the background. Stripped away of its intended audio cues and music, which are designed to build suspense, tension, and terror, it’s doubtful that your favourite scary movie will have the same impact.

The Call to Action plays at the end of your tour and is the difference between tip and no tip, so you’ve got to make every word count. Re-cap some of the magic moments of the tour. Be thankful, be upbeat, be witty: “If you can’t spare £1,000, a smaller amount will do.”

Your audio message will play once the tour has finished, while a shorter text message will be displayed on the tipping screen.

In order to ensure the best possible experience on YourTour, only approved tours by the YourTour team get published. So, build a tour, test it and then submit it for review and we’ll give it the once-over it as soon as possible.

3. Published Tours

Once your tour is published, Explorers will be able to find it via ‘Discover’ in the YourTour app and on YourTour.com in much the same way people find content on YouTube or other media distribution channels.

To ensure the best experience on YourTour, Explorers will be able to review tours. Tours that have high user ratings, for example, may be presented more prominently to users in the app.

A really effective way to maximise your tour downloads is by providing a direct link to your tours through your marketing channels. You can access your personalised YourTour marketing kit here. It contains everything you need to spread the word about your tour(s) via social media and other channels.

You can update your tour at any time, but it will need to be reviewed by us each time. Simply head to My Tours in your Creator app and click ‘Edit’ on the listing you want to change.

Your tips revenue will appear in the ‘Manage Balance’ section of your Account. You can withdraw some or all of it at your discretion.

Please note that Paypal charges 3.2% on all withdrawals. Withdrawals to bank accounts are free over £25. There is a £0.50 fee for any withdrawal under £25. Withdrawals usually take 2-4 working days to arrive.

Fear not! We’re working on a Creator dashboard that will provide you with an at-a-glance summary of all your Tour activity: From tour downloads, to tours taken to tips received!

It’s really important that YourTour’s review system remains fair and transparent. For this reason, we’ll only remove reviews if they contain the kind of unacceptable material detailed below:

Manipulation: Comments left or received where the reviews’ primary value is to artificially enhance an Explorer’s reputation.

Abuse: Reviews that contain profanity or other inappropriate or unrelated content within review comments will be deleted.

Personal details – This could be any kind of private information, such as addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses.

It goes without saying that the YourTour community are used to filtering out overly emotional and critical reviews, especially when they’re sitting alongside others that are mostly positive.

4. My Account

Our support team is here to help, replying to messages during the hours of Monday to Friday, 8am – 11pm; Saturday and Sunday 9am-6pm.

If you have a question or support issue please click here to send us a message. We aim to reply to all messages within 24 hours.

We work to resolve all issues online rather than by phone – this is the fastest way for us to access all the account information we need to help you.

To reset your password, simply go into the More section of the Creator App, then tap Settings, and you’ll see Change Password.

If you’d like to change your email address, simply email us at hello@goyourtour.com, and we’ll get it changed for you as soon as possible.

Also, remember to add hello@goyourtour.com to your list of safe senders so you don’t miss any important emails about your bookings!

There are 3 things you can do to make sure you always receive our emails:

Check that your registered email address is correct on you profile settings page.

Check your SPAM or junk folder to see if the email has ended up in the wrong place.

When you sign up to YourTour, you agree to the terms and conditions in our Terms of Use.

There’s no contract to sign – but by signing up with YourTour, you’re telling prospective Explorers and YourTour that you will abide by the policies and procedures described in these agreements. Happy building!

About

Welcome to the YourTour Help Center, where you’ll find answers to commonly asked questions.